Case Study: Trek Medics achieves faster life-saving emergency response with Twilio

How Trek Medics connects emergency providers—and saves lives—with Twilio

Trek Medics is a nonprofit that builds pre-hospital and emergency care systems in low- and middle-income regions, where dropped calls, long wait times and limited telecom infrastructure make timely emergency response a matter of life and death. Because many communities lack smartphones, consistent internet or local telecom networks, the organization needed a communications system that worked over basic mobile phones and could be deployed without building costly infrastructure from scratch.

Trek Medics built a Twilio-powered solution starting with Programmable Messaging to create BEACON, an SMS-based dispatch platform, and later added Twilio Flex as a customizable contact center. The stack was set up in days, scales easily, and lets non-engineers change workflows; it’s enabled lifesaving interventions (for example, volunteers guided to an opioid overdose in Puerto Rico) and has driven urban response times down to about six–seven minutes. The platform now supports operations in 14 countries with further expansion planned.

Trek Medics

Jason Friesen

Founder